Make Our Army a Great School of Mao Tse-tung’s Thought

— In Commemoration of the 39th Anniversary of the Founding of Our Army

[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 9, #32, Aug. 5,
1966, pp. 8-10. Thanks are due to the WWW.WENGEWANG.ORG
web site for some of the work done for this posting.]

OUR great leader Chairman Mao Tse-tung recently gave us an
extremely important directive on army building.

Chairman Mao said: The People’s Liberation Army should
be a great school. In this great school, our armymen should learn politics, military affairs
and culture. They can also engage in agricultural production and side occupations, run some
medium-sized or small factories and manufacture a number of products to meet their own needs
or for exchange with the state at equal values. They can also do mass work and take part in
the socialist education movement in the factories and villages. After the socialist education
movement is over, they can always find mass work to do, so that the army will for ever be at
one with the masses. They should also participate in the struggles of the cultural revolution
to criticize the bourgeoisie whenever they occur. In this way, the army can concurrently
study, engage in agriculture, run factories and do mass work. Of course, these tasks should
be properly co-ordinated, and a distinction should be made between the primary and secondary
tasks. Each army unit should engage in one or two of the three fields of activity — agriculture,
industry and mass work, but not in all three at the same time.

Chairman Mao said: In this way, our army of several
million will be able to play a very great role indeed.

This directive of Chairman Mao is a great call to our army
made under the circumstances that the great proletarian cultural revolution is developing
vigorously in China and the class struggle is becoming more acute and complicated both at
home and abroad, and it is a great call issued under the circumstances that our army is
carrying out the instructions of the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the
Chinese Communist Party and Comrade Lin Piao and is creatively studying and applying Chairman
Mao’s works, energetically giving prominence to politics and making great progress in all
fields of work. It is a great call which demands that our army should go forward to a still
higher stage along the road to becoming an extremely proletarianized and extremely militant
army.

Chairman Mao wants us to run our army as a great school.
Working mainly as a fighting force, it concurrently studies, engages in agriculture, runs
factories and does mass work; it carries on and further develops the fine traditions of our
Party and our army, and trains and tempers millions of successors to the proletarian
revolutionary cause, so that our people’s army of several million can play a still greater
role in the cause of socialist revolution and socialist construction. It is a great school
for the study, implementation, dissemination and safeguarding of Mao Tse-tung’s thought.

It is now 39 years since Chairman Mao himself created this
army of ours. It is a worker and peasant army under the absolute leadership of the Chinese
Communist Party and built in accordance with the principles of Marxism-Leninism, a people’s
army of a totally new type, completely different from the feudal warlord or bourgeois
armies.

At an early stage in the creation of our army. Chairman
Mao clearly pointed out that it should certainly not confine itself to fighting, but should
be an armed body for carrying out the political tasks of the revolution. In the famous
resolution at the Kutien Congress, Chairman Mao wrote: “The Red Army fights not merely for
the sake of fighting but in order to conduct propaganda among the masses, organize them,
arm them, and help them to establish revolutionary political power. Without these objectives,
fighting loses its meaning and the Red Army loses the reason for its existence.”

Chairman Mao set our army three great tasks, namely,
fighting, mass work and production. He pointed out that our army was always a fighting
force, and at the same time it was a working force and a production force.

On the eve of nationwide victory. Chairman Mao said: “The
army is a school.” And “we must look upon the field armies with their 2,100,000 men as a
gigantic school for cadres.”

In the past decades, our army has done precisely what
Chairman Mao has taught us to.

The directive recently given by Chairman Mao constitutes
the most recent summing up of our army’s experience in previous decades and represents a
development of Chairman Mao’s consistent thinking on army building in the new historical
conditions. This directive is of great historic and strategic significance for enabling
our army to preserve for ever its distinctive character as a people’s army, for
consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat, for pushing forward China’s socialist
revolution and socialist construction, strengthening national defence, bringing the mighty
force of people’s war into full play and countering possible attacks by U.S. imperialism
and its accomplices.

Chairman Mao’s thinking on army building constitutes the
most thorough, correct and comprehensive body of proletarian ideas on army building.

Chairman Mao’s thinking on army building is diametrically
opposed to the purely military viewpoint in which consideration is given solely to military
affairs in complete disregard of politics, reducing the army’s task merely to fighting; it
is diametrically opposed to all bourgeois military ideas.

Throughout the 39 years’ history of our army, the
struggle between Chairman Mao’s thinking and line on army building and bourgeois military
ideas of various kinds has never ceased. This was true of the entire period of the
democratic revolution, and is equally true of the period of the socialist revolution.

In the 16 years since the founding of the People’s
Republic of China, we have waged three big struggles against representatives of the
bourgeois military line who wormed their way into the Party and the army.

The first big struggle started after the conclusion of
the war to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea. Under the pretext of “regularization” and
“modernization,” a handful of representatives of the bourgeois military line, making a
complete carbon copy of foreign practice, vainly attempted to negate our army’s historical
experience and fine traditions and to lead our army on to the road followed by bourgeois
armies. The bourgeois military dogmatism which they tried to push through was strongly
resisted and opposed by the broad masses of cadres and fighters in our army. Responding to
Chairman Mao’s call of “Down with the slave mentality! Bury dogmatism!”, the 1958 Enlarged
Session of the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party
smashed their frantic attack and defended Chairman Mao’s thinking and line on army
building.

The second big struggle took place at the same time as
our Party’s struggle against the Right opportunist anti-Party clique in 1959. Taking
advantage of the important posts they had usurped in the army, the principal members of
the anti-Party clique — who were exposed at the Party’s Lushan Conference — made a great
effort to do away with the Party’s absolute leadership over the army, to abrogate political
work, to reject the army’s tasks of participating in socialist construction and doing mass
work, and to abolish the local armed forces and the militia; in this way, they tried to
completely negate Chairman Mao’s thinking on the people’s army and people’s war. They
vainly hoped to refashion cur army according to the bourgeois, revisionist military line
so that it would become an instrument for their usurping leadership of the Party and the
Government, and for realizing their personal ambitions. The Enlarged Session of the
Military Commission held after the Party’s Lushan Conference thoroughly settled accounts
with them in regard to their crimes and dismissed them from office. This was a great
victory for Mao Tse-tung’s thought!

Since he took charge of the work of the Military
Commission of the Party’s Central Committee, Comrade Lin Piao has most resolutely and
thoroughly implemented Chairman Mao’s thinking and line concerning army building. In 1960,
with the attention and guidance of the Party’s Central Committee and Chairman Mao, the
Enlarged Session of the Military Commission presided over by Comrade Lin Piao went
further in eradicating the influence of the bourgeois military line, corrected the
orientation in political work, adopted the “Resolution Concerning the Strengthening of
Political and Ideological Work in the Armed Forces,” and carried on and developed the
spirit of the Kutien Congress, and thus established a new milestone in our army’s road
of advance. In the last few years, under the leadership of the Military Commission of the
Party’s Central Committee and Comrade Lin Piao, the whole army has held high the great
red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought and creatively studied and applied Chairman Mao’s
works, given prominence to politics, upheld the “four firsts,”1
vigorously fostered the “three-eight” working style,2 given
full scope to democracy in the three main fields of work,3
launched the “four-good” companies campaign,4 and taken part
in the socialist education movement and the great proletarian cultural revolution, took
part in and supported socialist construction, so that an excellent, flourishing situation
has emerged in the revolutionization of our army and in all other fields of work.

The third big struggle took place not long ago. Exposed
in this struggle were representatives of the bourgeoisie who had usurped important posts
in the army and were important members of the counter-revolutionary anti-Party,
anti-socialist clique recently uncovered by our Party. They had opposed the Party’s
Central Committee and Mao Tse-tung’s thought, had overtly agreed to but covertly opposed
Comrade Lin Piao’s directives on giving prominence to politics, had talked about putting
politics in command but in practice had put military affairs first, technique first and
work first. They had waved “red flags” to oppose the red flag and vigorously spread
eclecticism, i.e., opportunism, in the vain attempt to substitute a bourgeois military
line for Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s proletarian military line. Our Party’s thorough exposure
and repudiation of the handful of anti-Party careerists is a great new victory for Mao
Tse-tung’s thought!

The representatives of the bourgeoisie, who were exposed
in these big struggles of our army since the founding of the People’s Republic of China,
opposed Chairman Mao’s principle of building our army into a powerful, revolutionary army
of the proletariat, opposed absolute leadership by the Party over the army, opposed
political work and opposed the mass line. What they wanted was bourgeois regularization
and not proletarian revolutionization. They discarded our army’s glorious traditions,
reduced its three great tasks to the single task of training in combat skill in peacetime
and fighting in times of war. In short, everything they did was the diametrical opposite
of Chairman Mao’s thinking on army building and on turning our army into a great school.
Their criminal aim was to turn our army into a bourgeois army serving a few careerists,
an army divorced from Mao Tse-tung’s thought, from proletarian politics, from the masses
of the people and from productive labour.

The struggle between the two sets of ideas, the two
different lines, on army building is a reflection within the army of the struggle between
the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between the road of socialism and the road of
capitalism. So long as classes and class struggle still exist, this struggle will never
end. At home and abroad, the class enemy who is hoping, in vain, to cause our country to
change colour, will first of all try to make our army change colour. The tiny handful of
representatives of the bourgeoisie who worm their way into our army will always step
forward and try to stir up trouble whenever the class struggle becomes very intense.
However, under the brilliant light of the great thought of Mao Tse-tung, the broad masses
of cadres and fighters in our army, including some who have been temporarily misled,
will invariably be able to detect their ugly features, expose them to the light of day
and frustrate their conspiracies.

The history of our army over the decades has proved to
the hilt that Chairman Mao’s thinking and line on army building represent irrefutable
truth and are our army’s lifeline. At no time and in no circumstances is it permissible
for us to depart in the slightest from the orbit of Chairman Mao’s thinking and line on
army building.

We must respond with enthusiasm to the great call of
Chairman Mao Tse-tung, take over and develop the fine traditions of our army and run it
as a great school.

We shall resolutely learn politics, military affairs
and culture in accordance with Chairman Mao’s directive. We shall play an active part in
the socialist education movement and the great proletarian cultural revolution. Everyone
should take up the sharpest weapon, Mao Tse-tung’s thought, to criticize the bourgeoisie.
We should at all times hold ourselves ready to crush any possible attack by U.S.
imperialism and its accomplices.

We shall resolutely adhere to Chairman Mao’s directive
that the army should concurrently study, engage in agriculture, run factories and do mass
work. Everyone should take part in productive labour and for ever maintain the distinctive
character of working people. Everyone should do mass work, abide by the three main rules
of discipline and the eight points for attention,5 so that
the army will always be at one with the masses. Militia work should be done well and the
idea of people’s war should be implanted among the masses of the people. We must
enthusiastically take part and help in socialist construction, actively help with local
work, learn modestly from the local districts and strengthen the unity between the army
and the local districts.

To run this great army school well, the most important
and fundamental thing is to study and apply Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s works creatively. It
is necessary to study and to apply in the course of struggle. This great school must for
ever hold high the great red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought and always give prominence
to proletarian politics, use Mao Tse-tung’s thought as the guide for all work and arm
everyone with Mao Tse-tung’s thought.

This great school of ours is a great school of Mao
Tse-tung’s thought!

We must run this great school of Mao Tse-tung’s thought
well!

Let us march forward valiantly under the great banner
of Mao Tse-tung’s thought!